Thomas Poppleton's survey and map of Baltimore, begun in 1812 and published in 1822, shaped and directed the geographical growth and development of Baltimore City. His story and the stories of those who lived and worked in and from his city (including its merchant marine) are the focus of this blog.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Today, September 12, is Defender's Day, marking the defeat of the British at Baltimore in 1814, and the origin of our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. The war did not deter Baltimore Merchants from trading with the enemy, and in at least one instance they got caught. That case reached the Supreme Court after the war was over.

Briefly stated, this is a case brought by Samuel Goldsmith Griffith, the consignor/owner of a cargo of flour shipped on the Hiram from Baltimore in the fall of 1812 (after war was declared) to Lisbon, Portugal to help feed the British Army. It was brought against the American privateer Thorn, which captured the Hiram on its way to Lisbon. The Theron claimed the Hiram and its cargo as a prize after discovering that the Hiram was a vessel operating under a safe conduct license from the British which was against American law in the time of war, and made the Hiram subject to capture as a prize of war. The owners of the cargo claimed they knew nothing of the license and sought to have their goods (the flour) returned. The court decided to uphold the lower court decision that even if the owners of the cargo were unaware of the license, it was the illegal action of the ship owner in obtaining the license that made the ship and cargo liable for capture by the American privateer, and that all the proceeds belong to the captors (the Thorn, its owners, captain, and crew). [1]

Samuel Goldsmith Griffith (1777-1820) is the subject of a more extensive study of Baltimore merchants and trade during and after the War of 1812. Griffith met an inglorious end. He was shot to death by a black man living in Pennsylvania, John Reed, who Griffith claimed was a slave and his property. The two trials of John Reed are examined in detail in Legal Practice and Pragmatics in the Law: The 1821 Trials of John Reed, “Fugitive Slave”, by

Linda Myrsiades, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 138, No. 3 (July 2014), pp. 305-338. Confined to jail under a sentence of 108 months for the killing of Griffith's accomplice, the fate of John Reed is to date unknown.

The surviving evidence and proceedings in the case of the Hiram are to be found in

Finding the docket entry for a case is more difficult as the dockets are in chronological order from the day the case was first brought to the Court's attention. For example the Hiram's docket entry is found on folio 805 for February Term 1815, meaning that the case was entered on the Supreme Court docket then and, as indicated in the docket, decided on March 22, 1816. Note that the docket contains a stamped number '752' added much later which refers to how the Supreme Court had filed the case papers from the lower court and the order in which the National Archives filmed those papers.

Because it takes a year or two on average, in the era of the assigned cases, from the entry on the docket to the resolution of the case by the Court, the hunt for the dockets in the assigned cases usually begins one or two terms before the year of decision in the case as reflected in the minutes and the printed reports.

[1]Note that without recourse to the minutes from the Massachusetts Federal Circuit Court, you would not know that the lower court opinion that was affirmed by the Supreme Court was written by Justice Story sitting on circuit with the Circuit Court judge Davis who, in 1808, had asserted Congress had the right to impose an embargo on trade, thus allowing for cases of infractions of Jefferson's embargo to go forward in his court. In all 40 such cases, many apparently argued successfully by Samuel Dexter, were heard by juries in Davis's court, in all of which juries found for the defendants, despite clear evidence that they had defied the Embargo.